The Nature of Friendship
by So1said
Summary: Alex and Tom and their friendship from the outside.


_Authors Note: Right, so **pygmymeese** beta'd this absolutely wonderfully, even going back and re-doing it after I'd decided that I needed to change it... again, and putting up with all of my angsting about the bits I hated. She then finally convinced me to put it up, so I have three things to thank her for! Its short, but please enjoy! _

She'd never met Tom's best friend when they first started talking, though she'd certainly heard of him – at Brookland Comprehensive, who hadn't? Friendship didn't come up; there were much more interesting things to talk (and flirt shamelessly) about. It must have been about three weeks after Tom and Lia started to talk that she first met Alex properly. Even then it wasn't much of an introduction. Alex had tagged along when Tom came to see her in the library one day – with a quick nod and a mumbled 'Hi,' after Tom's quick introduction, he trudged off to the opposite side of the room to do some work. Lia didn't think much of it; Tom claimed her attention at once, with the latest rumour circulating the school.

Lia didn't see Tom much over the next few weeks - he and Alex were joined at the hip. But when Alex disappeared once again, Tom began to spend a lot of time with Lia and her group of friends. She began to like Tom more and more, and when he asked her out, she said yes.

As his girlfriend, Lia obviously spent a lot of time with Tom. Of course, this also meant spending a lot of time with Alex when he finally reappeared. When Tom sat with Lia's group of friends, Alex would sometimes come and sit with them, too. He wouldn't actively participate in the conversation (and Lia's friends made no effort to include him; they'd all heard the rumours), but he'd sit there quietly with school work of some sort. Eventually, Alex became the regular photographer of their stupidity, and proved to be surprisingly good at it (this was after his flat refusal of Tom's encouragement to join in – he always refused to allow people to take photographs or videos of him, the refusal accompanied with a strangely ironic twist of the lips).

After a few weeks, Lia began to wonder at their friendship. Alex and Tom were polar opposites– Alex was quiet and serious with a tendency to flinch at loud noises and (if the rumours were to be believed) a weak immune system. In contrast, Tom was loud, cheeky, sarcastic, and generally willing to do anything for a dare and try everything once.

She began to understand their strange friendship the day Alex disappeared again. He didn't reappear for nearly a month and Tom grew quieter and brusque as the days passed. After a while, the rumours and the bets on "the length of his absence _this time_; I mean, honestly, its getting ridiculous – soon he'll be put back a year, you know?" died down and were forgotten. The day Alex finally came back up to the field to find his friend during lunch, he looked awful. There was a bruise on his cheekbone, his arm was in a sling, and it looked as if he hadn't slept since he went away. Tom took one look at him and gently extracted himself from where he had been sitting with Lia.

That lunch, Alex and Tom sat under a tree on the far side of the field, oblivious to the stares of Lia's friends. When the bell went, Tom had red eyes and Alex looked even more drawn than usual, but they were smiling and joking with one another. It was the most carefree Lia had seen Tom in a long time.

This time around, Alex remained in school, and as she got to know him better, Lia's view of Alex began to change. He proved to be just as sarcastic as Tom and found it impossible to back down from a dare. She began to see why the two boys were such good friends.

More than once, she'd watched the two boys exchange a look and then burst out laughing. Tom told her that they had entire conversations that way, although he refused to tell her what they were about. (When she'd asked about Alex himself, all the questions that the entire school wanted the answers to, Tom'd clammed up. "We've been friends since primary school. He has a hard life." '_I'm not going to betray his trust, not even for you.' _remained unsaid. Lia knew better than to ask again.)

Then there had been that time when Tom had arrived at school sporting a black eye and the same clothes he had been wearing the day before (still covered in grass stains from that flying tackle in football). When confronted about it, he shrugged it off.

"It's nothing," he said. "Things just got a bit rough at Mum's last night. I crashed at Alex's. Jack doesn't mind, and she has the best first aid kit – she's got plaster-of-paris and everything."

Lia had worried, but there was nothing to be done. Like Alex, Tom was proud (although not proud enough to refuse to hand in the _clearly_ forged doctors' note Alex handed him in PE). She had been even more worried after break, where a year nine had bumped into Tom, talking backwards over his shoulder to his little friends. It had been a gentle bump, practically a brush-past, but Tom had doubled over as if he'd been punched in the stomach. Lia, horrified, had no idea what to do, but suddenly Alex was there. He helped Tom to the nearest chair, glaring at the unlucky Year Nine, who went white and stammered an apology before running off.

Tom gasped his thanks, but Alex just shrugged and handed him a water bottle and some meds from an unlabeled bottle. After that, Alex didn't leave Tom alone for the rest of the afternoon. He was there in the corridors to ensure that Tom wasn't jostled, there leaning against the wall at the end of any of Tom's classes that he wasn't already in to ensure he wasn't hurt in the stampede of teens. After school that day, Lia saw Alex help Tom gingerly into an unfamiliar blue car driven by a harassed redheaded woman, who fluttered over Tom with the kind of concern that Lia knew his mother never displayed any more.

On the surface, the two boys were so different – chalk and cheese. But beneath the surface (and there were no illusions about how deep they'd let Lia in – she'd barely scratched the surface of their friendship) there seemed to be an unspoken pact between them. Alex would lean on Tom, and in return, Tom would rely on Alex. It wasn't perfect, but it was all there was, for now.


End file.
